


Patience is a Virtue

by wyntirrose



Series: Tales of Don [4]
Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-17
Updated: 2009-12-17
Packaged: 2017-11-10 03:21:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/461670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyntirrose/pseuds/wyntirrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mikey needs Donnie NOW and he is not about to wait patiently. And Donnie learns that there may be more to his little brother than he first realized. He just needs the patience to look past the demands and "help".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Patience is a Virtue

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Notes: This was written in response to the prompt "Hours". It is inspired by a memory of some programmer buddies of mine back in university who used to spend their weekends staring at chain printouts of code, desperately trying to find the error in their program. It was very old school, but they always argued that it was far more effective than studying the screen. This is my first attempt at writing something in first person present tense. Hopefully I do the prompt and the tone justice. Comments and critique are always appreciated.

"Yo! Donatello!" Michelangelo yells from the next room.

I do my best to ignore him. I know what he wants and I also know that he can wait. Regardless of his tone saying otherwise.

"Donnie!"

The first time he had been demanding. Now he's verging on that annoying whine he knows drives me to distraction. He knows that he'll get what he wants sooner or later. And had he been pulling this stunt on any other day, I might have given in. But today is not the day to be trying my patience. I've been working on this programming code for hours – all night, in fact – and I am not about to let him and his broken game console drag me away from my work.

"I'll get to it later!" I call back, never taking my eyes off the chain printout in my hands.

"But Don-niiieeee!" he whines.

"NO!" I snap. "I am busy Mikey! Try being patient for once!"

I go back to staring at the lines of code, trying to find the broken piece that was preventing the program from working, but the lines just blur into one giant wall of text before my eyes and I can't make heads of tails of it. That must be why I never heard Mikey come in. I don't even realize he's hanging over my shoulder until it's too late.

"You didn't close your bracket," he says, reaching over my shoulder and tapping on the paper.

Once my heart stops trying to beat its way out of my plastron, I calmly putt he paper down.

"What?" I ask. There's no point in trying to sound angry or dangerous. Mikey wouldn't get the hint and I can't pull it off anyways.

"Your bracket. You didn't close it. Let me show it to you," he replies, sounding more than vaguely like a lolcat. He grabs the printout from my hands – without asking, I might add – and points to a line of code about halfway down the page.

"See?" he says. "You've got an open triangle bracket over here, but you don't close it over there." He circles the errors with light pencil marks.

I just stare at the paper, at the marks he's created. I've been staring at this particular section of code for the last half hour at least, wracking my brain as I've been trying to find the error. And Mikey finds it with a single glance!

"How'd you do that?" I demand. "How did you know that?"

Mikey just shrugs.

"LJ," he replies in a tone that says it should be obvious. "So now can you fix my game?"

I nod dumbly. If Mikey is seeing something that simple and I'm missing it completely, then it's definitely time for a break. After putting the printout in a safe place, I follow Mikey out of the room. I suppose that at this point I should know better than to underestimate my youngest brother. He's nowhere near as dumb as he plays it.

... Though I may have to revise that opinion somewhat; in light of the fact that he tried to fix his Xbox with a butter knife and coffee mug.


End file.
